


Tears in Heaven

by sunflowerseedsandscience



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9655286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerseedsandscience/pseuds/sunflowerseedsandscience
Summary: The first time he enters her, he cries.





	

The first time he enters her, he cries.

The sudden feeling of completion overwhelms him. It's as though his spirit has been fragmented his whole life, without his ever really having known it, and now suddenly, with every part of her surrounding every part of him, his soul has been re-knit, restored, returned to him with all its once-gaping holes lovingly mended. 

He doesn't try to hide it because he knows she'll understand- and she does. She lies beneath him, cradling his head in her hands, and when she sees the tears sparkling in his eyes, she draws his face down to hers. She kisses his lips, tenderly, kisses each of his eyes in turn, and brings his forehead to rest against her own. 

He tries to speak, but finds that he can't... and again, she understands. She holds her fingers to his lips, stilling him. "I know," she whispers. "I feel it, too."

He kisses her, long and slow, and begins to move within her.

 

\----------------

 

The first time they're together after he's returned to her, he cries.

She's promised him, repeatedly, that this is okay, that he's not going to hurt her, not going to hurt the baby, but still, his movements are timid, cautious. The sight of her doubled over in pain in her living room is much too fresh in his memory.

He lies curled behind her, framing her small body with his, spooned against her, in the position they'd loved to sleep in, before, but had never used for lovemaking. But now, with their child between them, she says it's the best option. And when he at last slips into her, he's glad she can't see his face, can't see the tears streaming down his cheeks as he finally feels, for the first time, that he is home.

She knows, though. She always knows. She arches her back against him, twisting her head over her shoulder to capture his mouth with her own. She brushes his tears away with her thumb, stroking his cheek. He runs his hand along her body, down her shoulder, over the ridges of her ribcage, around her waist, and across her round belly.

There's a twitch under his fingers, a sudden ripple in her skin, and he jerks his hand away in surprise. She chuckles and takes his fingers in her own, placing them back on her belly and holding them there. He feels their child moving against his hand and thinks, _We did that. Just by doing what we're doing right now._ And he wonders- the way he'd felt, that first time, had he known, somehow?

She reaches behind herself and clutches at his body, impatient, and after that it's difficult to think at all anymore.

 

\-----------------

 

Their first time after they've escaped and driven off together, he cries.

He'd believed, for months, that this would never, ever happen again, that it was impossible. And until barely a day ago, he'd believed that he was going to die without ever knowing this bliss again. The first long, slow slide into her welcoming warmth seems to wake something deep within him, seems to tear off the suffocating shroud that his prolonged solitude has wrapped him in. 

He's dismayed to find that it hurts her. He wants to stop, but she refuses. "It's not that unusual," she says. "Many women experience some pain, the first time after... after....." She closes her eyes, holding her own tears in check. He wishes she wouldn't, wishes she would just let go, but he knows that she's never found it easy to cry around anyone, not even him... and he's been gone for so long. 

So instead, he allows himself to cry, and in soothing his pain, she forgets her own. For now.

 

\-----------------

 

The first time he's with her in the new house, he cries.

He remembers their first time together, in his bed in his Arlington apartment, neither of them concerned with having to go anywhere at all except to work the next morning, after which they could return, together, and make love again. Repeat ad nauseam.

On the road, on the run, the constant question of "Where next?" had stolen all possibility of real rest from them. They had settled down each night wondering whether tomorrow would be the day they would be caught, the day the running would finally come to an end for them, the day that all hope of escape would be dashed forever. Lovemaking had been tense, anxious, each constantly keeping an ear out, unable to truly lose themselves in one another. 

This house represents an end to all of that... but it doesn't truly sink in for him until he's lying on top of her in their new bed, upstairs in their new house. He will make love to her here tonight, they will go to sleep, and tomorrow, they will wake up together. Tomorrow night, they'll do the same thing... and the night after that, and the night after that, and on and on. He's never before in his life found the idea of an unchanging routine to be quite so beautiful.

"Only good times from here on," he tells her, and in the moonlight shining through their bedroom window, she looks as though she would very much like to believe him.

 

\-----------------

 

The first time they make love after reconciling, he cries.

He had done everything she had asked of him... eventually. He had gotten himself out of the house. He had made the psychiatric appointments (and eventually, he'd even started going to them). He had filled the prescriptions, had taken the pills, had gotten active again, had developed a routine. They had returned to the FBI, and he had thrown himself into his work with just as much passion as before- but with far fewer of the foolish risks he'd been given to taking in his youth.

But without her, it had been like preparing a gourmet meal and placing it on an empty table, performing a concerto to a vacant opera house, painting a portrait and hanging it facing the wall. He knows what she would say if she could hear his thoughts: she would remind him, yet again, that he has to do these things for himself, that doing them just for her would be unhealthy, would be missing the point.

And he _has_ done them for himself. But what use is it all, without her to share it with? His life, without her in it, is a "how" without a "why." He knows now that she cannot be solely responsible for mending the tears in his soul- he must see to many of them on his own- but sharing it with her is what makes the pain of mending worthwhile.

They're not as young as they once were. Their bodies have changed, skin loosening where it was once firm, lean frames hardened and weathered by rough use... but she is more beautiful to him than she has ever been before, a treasure restored to him after a long, painful absence.

She wraps her legs around him, and he is home. The tears are flowing freely down his cheeks, but he doesn't care, because he knows she understands. She always understands.

She takes his head gently in her hands and presses her forehead to his. "I know," she says. "I feel it, too."


End file.
